The Bismarck Tribune. Sept. 18, 2012
     Make the most of N.D. resources
  

   North Dakota natural gas production and crop yields will
converge at a proposed fertilizer plant at Spiritwood. CHS Inc. recently announced plans to build a $1.2 billion fertilizer plant, converting natural gas from the Bakken into anhydrous ammonia, urea and liquid fertilizer.
     It is a win-win for the North Dakota energy industry and the
state’s farmers and ranchers, especially if it brings down the
price of fertilizer and improves availability.
     Presently, companies flare or burn off 30 percent of the natural
gas produced in the state. It happens because the infrastructure
for gathering natural gas, processing and shipping it has not grown
as quickly as exploration and production. It’s also because the
price of natural gas is very low, which makes investment in the
infrastructure hard to come by.
     Although flaring is better for the environment than releasing
natural gas into the atmosphere, it wastes energy. In mature
natural gas fields elsewhere, most of the gas is captured and sold.
Flaring accounts for less than 10 percent of production.
     The CHS fertilizer plant will create in-state demand for natural
gas, giving companies here another reason to capture gas and ship
it. The plant will produce fertilizer for a multistate region.
     Unfortunately, the plant isn’t expected to begin production
until sometime in 2016.
     The pro-farmer relationship between natural gas and fertilizer
is similar to proposals to refine crude oil into diesel fuel, which
is much in demand as a fuel for tractors and other farm equipment.
It’s not unusual for the state to see shortages of diesel fuel
during planting and harvest seasons. Several diesel refineries are
in the works for western North Dakota.
     North Dakota benefits many times over when the state can take
raw natural resources and put them to work supporting production
agriculture. It creates an economic model that gives an advantage
to the state’s ag producers.
     The company will spend $10 million on engineering studies for
the plant. The present financing package for the fertilizer plant
will be a mix of owner’s equity, debt and third-party equity.
     CHS is the nation’s largest farmer-owned cooperative. And the
Spiritwood plant is believed to be the largest single private
sector development in the state’s history.